Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Scientists use nanotechnology to harvest electricity from temperature fluctuations

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/21/thermal-nanotechnology-harvest-electricity/

So far your footsteps, breath and nervous energy have all been tapped to charge up batteries, and now researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology scientists have pulled it off using thermal changes. They did it with so-called pyroelectric nanogenerators, which use polarization changes to harvest heat energy from temperature fluctuations. Normally output current is too low for commercial electronics, but by making one with lead zirconate titanate (PZT), the team was able to create a device that could charge a Li-ion coin battery to power a green LED for a few seconds. The researchers predict that by doubling the surface area, they could drive wireless sensors or LCDs using only environmental temperature changes from an engine or water pipe, for instance. The result could be green power, but without all that pesky moving around.

Filed under: Peripherals, Science, Alt

Via: Phys Org

Source: Nano Letters

Samsung's $249 Chromebook lights up benchmarks with the latest Ubuntu build

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/20/arm-samsung-chromebook-ubuntu-benchmarks/

A Googler managed to load up Samsung's latest Chromebook with Ubuntu and spelled out the process for like-minded DIYers in October, and now some benchmarks of Mountain View's $249 machine running Raring Ringtail -- which is still in development -- have surfaced. With a 1.7GHz dual-core Exynos 5 Dual processor under the hood, the ARM-based machine can hang with -- and in some cases beat -- the likes of a 1.8GHz quad-core Intel Atom D525 chip and a 1.4GHz quad-core Calxeda Highbank node in benchmarks using the Phoronix Test Suite. The rig also holds its own when pitted against a PandaBoard equipped with an OMAP4460 1.2GHz dual-core processor. Hit the source link to dig into pages of the test results for yourself.

Filed under: Laptops, Software, Samsung, Google

Source: Phoronix

AOC's 23-inch IPS monitor almost skips the bezel, ships soon for $199

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/21/aoc-borderless-i2367fh-ips-monitor/

Close on the heels of its "virtually borderless" (when it's turned off) 27-inch IPS monitor, display maker AOC has come up with a smaller sibling to add to the family. The 23-incher, tagged the i2367fh, totes similar styling and specs -- IPS technology, a claimed 2mm bezel, 1920 x 1080 resolution with 50,000,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, 5ms response time and two HDMI ports. The off timer function its predecessor sported also remains. However the new model, which is part of a different series, can't boast of the same height-adjustable stand and 4-watt speakers, integrating a 2-watt pair instead. The monitor carries a $199 sticker, but you can snag it for 10 bucks lower on backorder from B&H Photo and Amazon -- stock is expected later this month.

Continue reading AOC's 23-inch IPS monitor almost skips the bezel, ships soon for $199

Filed under: Displays

Source: Amazon, B&H Photo

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Samsung to outline 8-core big.LITTLE ARM processor in February

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/20/samsung-to-outline-8-core-big-little-arm-processor-in-february/

Samsung's processor design team has been on a roll with fast chips this year with the Exynos 4 Quad and Exynos 5 Dual. Based on its agenda for the International Solid-State Circuits Conference, that momentum isn't about to stop. A company presentation at the event on February 19th will delve into a new heterogeneous, 8-core processor that relies on ARM's concept of big.LITTLE computing: one half is a quad-core, 1.8GHz ARM Cortex-A15 that will do all the heavy lifting, while the other is a quad 1.2GHz Cortex-A7 that takes over in quieter moments. We don't know much more about the chip beyond the expected 28-nanometer manufacturing process, but it's easy to see a mobile chip that's fast without having to consume much energy in its downtime. Most of the mystery surrounds where Samsung will launch the processor first, rather than what it can do: the big.LITTLE chip would be most valuable in a smartphone, but a potentially large size could relegate it to tablets early on.

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Mobile, Samsung

Via: EETimes, GSMArena

Source: ISSCC (PDF)

Oppo's Ulike 2 boasts 5MP front camera, clearly made for self-portrait addicts like you

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/20/oppo-ulike-2-u705t/

Hold up! Oppo's not quite done with teasing just yet for the day. The company's Sina Weibo account has quietly announced the Ulike 2, a white 4.5-inch phone designed with ladies in mind: not only does it have a common eight-megapixel main camera on the back, but there's also a staggering five-megapixel front-facing imager with beautification features (like face slimming, skin whitening, skin smoothing and more) to keep the self-portrait addicts busy. Other specs include a gapless 960 x 540 LCD (with 2.2mm-thick bezel), 1GB RAM, 16GB built-in storage, micro-SIM slot, a 2,020mAh battery, and TD-SCDMA radio for China Mobile's network. There's no telling how much this Android 4.0 phone will hurt your wallet, nor is there any official information on the underlying processor, but we shall find out when it hits the Chinese market on December 19th, if not at the Find 5's launch event on the 12th.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

Source: Oppo

Kindle Fire HD 8.9 Teardown: A Samsung Tablet By Another Name?

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5962075/kindle-fire-hd-89-teardown-a-samsung-tablet-by-another-name

With its little brother having already spilled its guts, it was always going to be interesting to see how the new 9-inch Fire compared. Turns out it owes an awful lot to Samsung.

Powerbook Medic has torn the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 apart for the world to peer inside. It seems Samsung has done well out of the tablet, as it's supplying—at the very least—the display, RAM, and flash memory. The processor is courtesy of Texas Instruments, though.

One weird finding is that the battery is actually a split unit: it uses two separate cells, joined by a battery controller board, to provides its rather weedy 6000MAH 22.2wh power source. That's not particularly common, nor is it obvious why it's been done—space, perhaps.

Elsewhere, the teardown contains lots of nerdish findings, but there's one take-home message worth listening to: the device seems fairly easy to repair, especially the screen. [Powerbook Medic]

Simulated Brain Ramps Up To Include 100 Trillion Synapses

Source: http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-11/world%E2%80%99s-fastest-supercomputer-simulates-100-trillion-synapses-many-human-brain

IBM is developing a cognitive computing program under a DARPA program and just hit a major high.

The Sequoia supercomputer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, recently crowned world champion of supercomputers, just simulated 10 billion neurons and 100 trillion connections among them--the most powerful brain simulation ever. IBM and LLNL built an unprecedented 2.084 billion neurosynaptic cores, which are an IBM-designed computer architecture that is designed to work like a brain.

IBM was careful to say it didn't build a realistic simulated complete brain-- "Rather, we have simulated a novel modular, scalable, non-von-Neumann, ultra-low power, cognitive computing architecture," IBM researchers say in an abstract (PDF) of their new paper. It meets DARPA's metric of 100 trillion synapses, which is based on the number of synapses in the human brain. This is part of DARPA's cognitive computing program, called Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE).

To do it, IBM used its cognitive computing chips, which the company unveiled last year. They are designed to recreate the phenomena between spiking neurons and synapses. More than 2 billion of these cores were divided into 77 brain-inspired regions, with gray matter and white matter connectivity, according to IBM. The gray matter networking comes from modeling, and the white matter networking comes from a detailed map of c! onnectio ns in the macaque brain. The combined total 530 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses ran 1,542 times slower than real time--actually quite fast, in computing terms.

The ultimate goal is a computer that works like a brain, and can analyze information in real time from multiple sources. Under SyNAPSE, it would also be able to rewire itself dynamically in response to its environment, just like real brains do. It would also have to be very small and low-power, which in some ways will be even more challenging than developing the connections. IBM presented its latest results at the Supercomputing 2012 conference.

[IBM via KurzweilAI]

Researchers harness static electricity from your twitchiness to charge batteries

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/20/researchers-harness-static-electricity-from-movement/

If you're the fidgety type, new research from Georga Tech may one day turn your nervous energy into a fully charged cellphone. The scientists, who previously borrowed piezoelectric power from walking, created static electricity generated from movement between plastic and metal, similar to the way a balloon can be electrified by rubbing it on your hair. The charging area was greatly increased by patterning the surfaces on a nanoscale level, allowing this "tribolectric effect" to be multiplied and converting up to 15 percent of the mechanical energy into electricity (so far). About 50 common materials could be paired to create the material, and a 2 x 2-inch patch could conceivably be worn as an armband and used to charge up a cellphone battery. So far the tech works fine in the lab, but it remains to be seen if real world vibrations can generate enough energy to make it practical. While you're waiting, though, feel free to stock up on coffee.

Filed under: Cellphones, Science, Mobile

Via: MIT Technology Review

Source: Nano Letters

Monday, November 19, 2012

Samsung launches LTE edition of Galaxy Note 10.1 in Korea

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/19/galaxy-note-10.1-lte/

A 10.1-inch tablet you can make calls on isn't the fever-dream of an ironic hipster, but a real device you've been able to pick up since the summer. Now, Samsung is launching the promised LTE variant of of its Galaxy Note 10.1 in Korea. Aside from the new modem, the internals are unchanged, which means we should be able to snag a HM5100 and live out our Napoleon Solo fantasies in peace.

Filed under: Tablets, Samsung

Samsung launches LTE edition of Galaxy Note 10.1 in Korea originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Nov 2012 11:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Amazon Kindle Fire HD review (8.9-inch, 4G LTE)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/19/amazon-kindle-fire-hd-8.9-review/

What a difference a generation makes. While the original Kindle Fire impressed, there was only one thing that really made it worth considering: it was cheap. Really cheap. But, when we got our hands on the 7-inch, 720p Kindle Fire HD a few months back we had an honest-to-gosh nice device -- that happened to be cheap. And what do we have here? Why, it's a slightly larger version of that very same tablet, but at a significantly higher cost.

It's the Kindle Fire 8.9, a tick under two inches larger at the diagonal but with a starting price of $299 for 16GB, $100 more than the cheapest 7-inch Fire HD. It goes way up from there, though, with the 32GB LTE version we tested starting at a rather more dear $499. That's far beyond the threshold of cheap, but does it still make for good value? Join us as we find out.

Gallery: Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9 review

Continue reading Amazon Kindle Fire HD review (8.9-inch, 4G LTE)

Filed under: Tablets, Amazon

Amazon Kindle Fire HD review (8.9-inch, 4G LTE) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Nov 2012 16:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Motorola's RAZR i MT788 announced with 2GHz Intel chip, heading to China Mobile next month

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/19/motorola-razr-i-mt788-intel/

Motorola created quite some buzz with its first "Intel inside" Android phone, the RAZR i, back in September, so it's only natural to see the company tapping into the Chinese market with a localized variant. Dubbed the RAZR i MT788, this China Mobile device bears much similarity to its Western sibling on paper: 2GHz Intel Atom Z2480, 4.3-inch 960 x 540 AMOLED display (with Gorilla Glass), eight-megapixel camera, microSD expansion (up to 32GB) and Android Ice Cream Sandwich.

The difference? Well, the chassis is the most obvious one: instead of using the same design as the original RAZR i, the new MT788 looks identical to the MSM8625-powered dual-SIM XT788 on China Telecom. On top of that, the battery is rated at just 1,735mAh instead of the RAZR i's 2,000mAh, and there's just 4GB of built-in memory instead 16GB; but the front-facing camera's bumped up from 0.3 megapixels to 1.3. There's no price just yet, but interested buyers can pick one up in China starting in mid-December. Will the world's largest carrier help Intel take a significant bite out of the mobile phone market? Only time will tell.

Gallery: Motorola's RAZR i MT788 announced with 2GHz Intel chip, heading to China Mobile next month

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

Motorola's RAZR i MT788 announced with 2GHz Intel chip, heading to China Mobile next month originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Nov 2012 06:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Saturday, November 17, 2012

Google's Nexus 10 tablet gets torn down, found to be Samsung-made inside and out

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/16/googles-nexus-10-tablet-gets-torn-down-found-to-be-samsung-mad/

We've already seen what makes the Nexus 7 tick, and the folks at PowerBook Medic have now done the teardown honors with its larger counterpart, the Nexus 10. Expectedly, there aren't many major surprises to be found, but the site did note the "complete ease" of taking the tablet apart, with no glue or other impediments getting in the way. It's also confirmed that this is very much a Samsung-made tablet, with the company not only putting it together, but manufacturing everything from the processor to the flash memory to the battery. You can find the full rundown at the link below.

Filed under: Tablets

Google's Nexus 10 tablet gets torn down, found to be Samsung-made inside and out originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 16 Nov 2012 18:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iFixit pries open Google's Nexus 4, exposes somewhat stubborn battery (update: repairability verdict, LTE chip)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/16/ifixit-google-nexus-4-teardown-battery/

The warranty-voiders over at iFixit decided to spend their Friday evening tearing into a freshly delivered Nexus 4 and have given us a peek inside Google's smartphone darling. After removing a pair of screws and spending a few minutes prying off the rear cover, the teardown specialists found that the backplate's sparkling exterior isn't the only thing that makes it special. In addition to serving a cosmetic purpose, the hind side plate packs a handful of pressure contacts that power the handset's NFC antenna and connect its wireless charging induction coil. Extracting the battery required evicting additional screws and a fair amount of elbow grease to wrangle the 2100 mAh pack free from adhesive. As for the motherboard, its removal was a relatively easy process comprised of freeing it from a couple of connectors. The outfit's final verdict on the device's repairability isn't in just yet, but you can tap the source link below to gaze at the LG-made phone's innards.

Update: iFixit has given Mountain View's smartphone a 7 out of 10 score in terms of repairability. The three point mark-down stems from a tricky battery removal experience and the glass front, which is fused to the display and its frame. Also, despite the lack of LTE support, a close look at the motherboard reveals a Qualcomm WTR1605L seven-band 4G LTE chip.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Google

iFixit pries open Google's Nexus 4, exposes somewhat stubborn battery (update: repairability verdict, LTE chip) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 16 Nov 2012 19:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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PSA: HTC One X+, five other devices from ASUS, HTC, Novatel and Samsung on sale at AT&T

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/16/psa-asus-htc-samsung-novatel-at-att/

American carriers love to launch their device lines in bundles, and AT&T just proved the rule in style. Forget the LTE iPad mini -- six other devices have shipped in one day, covering just about every category Big Blue offers. Want a Windows tablet? There's a $500 ASUS VivoTab RT waiting for you. Smartphones? HTC's $200 One X+ covers the high-end, while its $50 One VX and Samsung's $100 Galaxy Express target the more frugal among us. Even shutterbugs and cutting-edge networkers can pick up a $500 Samsung Galaxy Camera or Novatel's $50 MiFi Liberate hotspot. There's no doubt that AT&T is cramming the channel full of new gadgets in the hopes of scooping up all the Black Friday sales it can, but we'll forgive the slightly cynical strategy for the sake of a wider device selection.

Filed under: Cellphones, Ca meras, Tablets, Networking, Mobile, Samsung, HTC, ASUS, AT&T

PSA: HTC One X+, five other devices from ASUS, HTC, Novatel and Samsung on sale at AT&T originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 16 Nov 2012 22:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Lenovo's upcoming five-inch 1080p phone to feature dual-SIM connectivity

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/17/lenovo-1080p-5-inch-phone/

By now you should already know that HTC, Sharp and Oppo share a common theme: 1080p display on their five-inch phones. As it turns out, Lenovo also wants in on the VIP list. Spotted on Sina Weibo earlier this week (but have since been deleted) are the above three screenshots showing off Lenovo's customized Android UI in 1080p glory. As with many phones in China these days, the device in question supports dual-SIM connectivity -- the screenshots indicate that it's connected to China Telecom's CDMA2000 network and China Mobile's 2G network simultaneously.

Our own source wouldn't directly confirm that it's a five-inch display on this mysterious phone, but we were told that it'll be somewhere between 4.5 inches and 5.5 inches -- we'll take that as a yes, especially since the only 1080p mobile panels available right now are the five-inch, 440ppi ones from Sharp and JDI. Our source also said the phone's entered DVT (Design Verification Test) phase for some time, so it might not be long before we hear an official announcement in China. As always, stay tuned.

Gallery: Lenovo's upcoming five-inch 1080p phone to feature dual-SIM connectivity

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Lenovo

Lenovo's upcoming five-inch 1080p phone to feature dual-SIM connectivity originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 17 Nov 2012 02:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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